


many hard hearts were melted

by Nakimochiku



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8291224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: "Did you ever read Daniel Defoe? This is exactly like Journal of a Plague Year. Chaos. Break down of society. Rampant fear."
Alexander Hamilton is not the man he wants to be with, in the end, but he's glad to have him just the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just in time for halloween: probably the happiest Zombie AU you'll ever read. (This accidentally turned into some kind of strange literary metaphor. I'm sorry my Lit Major is coming through. If you can avoid Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year, do it.)

“You’re not the person I wanted to be here with.” Alexander Hamilton curses, face buried in the circle of his arms.

Aaron doesn't take it personally. “You and me both.”

*

The end comes quickly. The military bombed New York city. Aaron had pulled Alex into a supply closet moments before hand. He hadn't meant to save his life.

(He used to think in dangerous situations, like a shooting or a terrorist threat, he would secure himself first and damn everyone else. He didn't think when he grabbed Alexander, he just _did_.)

They’d ventured out of the supply closet in rumpled and dusty suits, hours later when the rumbling and crashing and shaking stopped, blinking at the sunlight through shattered windows. The dead wandered the streets, phone lines were down. Aaron watched Alexander Hamilton (the tomcat, the little lion, Mr. Nonstop) sit down, weep and choke on his wife’s name. Aaron stood at the door, gazing at Susan from Accounting’s ravenous corpse in the office across from theirs and pretended to give him privacy.

He is glad of Alex’s presence. He wouldn't have known what to do with himself if he were alone.

*

“We could go north, to Buffalo. Cross the bridge to Canada or something.”

“And what do you expect to be in Canada?”

“What do you expect to be here?”

“My wife. My children. My in laws and friends.”

“They’re all dead.”

“I refuse to believe you’re the only person left in this god forsaken city.”

“Refuse it all you’d like, it doesn't make it any less true.”

*

The first corpse he kills was once a Mcdonald's employee. Its hair hangs stringy before dull lifeless eyes. Aaron swings once, twisting his whole body to put force behind the pipe, watches the gory results in slow motion, feels the impact ringing up the length of  metal and his arms so they tingle.  The corpse drops, skull caved, neatly indented.

“Holy shit, Burr.” Alex murmurs in horror and awe. Aaron’s stomach roils like he should be sick. But he isn't. He idly shakes brain matter off the end of the pipe, thinks he must look ridiculous in an expensive suit covered in blood.

(Like a million other things his instincts sing, he didn't think he just moved, heat and fury flaring.)

After that first, it is easy.

*

They make it eventually to the Hamilton household. Eliza taped a note to the door: _Gone north with Angelica and Peggy, Father didn’t make it. Praying for you._

It is eloquent in its delivery. Alex sits on the porch step, shoulders slumped and defeated. A corpse shuffles towards them. Aaron dares lay his hand on his shoulder in a pathetic attempt at comforting sympathy.

“Do you wanna try your house?” Alex asks after a moment of defeated silence.

“There's nothing for me there.” Aaron says firmly. “Let's just get out of this city.”

Alex knows how to build fires. He knows how to pick locks. He knows how to make something from nothing. Aaron feels painfully inadequate travelling next to him, wandering the infected alleys of New York with snacks and soda they got from smashing in vending machine windows, armed with crowbars and baseball bats.

They sleep in empty condos back to back, searching empty shells of homes for items of use. Lighters, rain slickers, kitchen knives, granola bars, canned peaches. Their days are filled with little things and smashing skulls.

They don't speak to each other. They grunt and gesture and move silently as the dead things that growl, groan and stalk.

Alex knows how to hotwire cars, and siphon gas. Aaron stands lookout, slightly dented metal bat held up and ready to swing at any creature that comes their way, until Alex whistles and he can slide into the car, and they zoom away, skin tingling with an adrenaline.

The oil smooth cogs of their machine should not come as a surprise to him: they worked well together on cases, they used to finish each other's’ sentences in court, used to build on each other's arguments like engineers constructing bridges. This is just another system for them to fall into.

“You gonna teach me?” Aaron asks conversationally when they stop for the night in a parking lot, easing the seats down and pulling a blanket from the back seat, tossing another to Alex.

“Teach you what?”

“How to do what you do. Pick locks, hotwire cars.”

Alex chuckles, “If I taught you any of that, what would you need me around for?”

Aaron doesn't answer; it would be too telling.

*

They don't know where they’re going, but it doesn't seem to matter, really.

Sometimes Aaron hears Alex crying in the middle of the night. Sometimes Aaron squeezes out a couple tears too. Sometimes their hands find each others in the dark.

This may not be the man he wanted to be with at the end, but he’s better than nothing.

*

“Did you ever read Daniel Defoe?”

A couple responses run through his head, mostly that _his head hurts_ , and _what does it matter_ and _shut up, Alexander_. He sucks in a patient breath and answers, “I actively avoided eighteenth century literature, why?” His pipe is loose in his hand, and he keeps staring down the road where a couple of assholes roughed them up and stole their car, even though it's long gone. His eye throbs, his knuckles are bruised. A couple corpses are strewn on the steps below, heads caved.

“This is kinda like Journal of a Plague Year, you know?” Alex finger combs his hair back into some semblance of order and ties it. There's still blood on his chin from his split lip, and he favours his left side, swinging his metal bat back and forth. “Chaos, a breakdown of society, rampant fear.”

“I’ve lived in New York my whole life and I’ve never once been mugged.” Aaron answers. “It takes a fucking apocalypse for me to get into a fist fight.”

Alex nods like that proves his point. “You lived in the nice part of New York.” He leans back. The corpse behind the glass door beside him slaps vainly at it in an effort to get to him. Aaron casts him a sidelong glance. The sunset colours him red and gold, sets the blood on his knuckles and lips in high relief, like a baroque painting. Aaron is too tired to pretend he isn’t captivated. Eventually they’ll have to get up, scrounge up another car and more gas, rebuild the little cache of supplies like squirrels. They don’t move. They are tired and a little dumbfounded, contemplating each other and what brought them to this moment.  “Welcome to the plague year.”

*

“We’re alive.”

“For how long?”

“Does that matter?”

“I wish I could say it did.”

“It's all about the moments between. It's the little things.”

“I've been trying to figure out why us. Why did we survive?”

“There's no grand explanation. You pulled us into a closet. That's it, that's the reason.”

*

Alex sleeps. With nothing to keep his mind so occupied, with no cases or social justice talking points or media circuses to throw himself into, he curls in the passenger seat with a battered copy of Great Expectations. It lays open on his hip, cheek smashed against the headrest as he snuffles and squirms and twists the blanket in his fists.

Aaron watches him from the corner of his eye. His hair is greasy, they ransacked a pharmacy for dry shampoo but it only does so much, so he keeps it in a bun and complains daily about cutting it off. His brow is furrowed and his sleep troubled. He whimpers, and Aaron debates reaching out, shaking his shoulder to wake him, looking into his big black eyes and distracting him from the horror show of their lives by filling the air with meaningless words.

He keeps his hands to himself and his eyes fixed on the road.

*

“We’re on the last can of fruit cocktail.”

“You can have it.”

“You are a fucking liar. You know you want it. We can share.”

“It’s fine--”

“Shut up and eat the damn diabetes inducing cherry.”

“You know I have a family history of diabetes right?”

“Uh huh. I'm obviously trying to kill you off.”

*

The days seem long and tedious. They blend into weeks, into poor shaving jobs with knives in the rearview mirror, into canteens of instant coffee and baths of water bottles and washcloths. Their movements are as aimless as the dead wandering outside.

They don't talk. Alex’s face seems permanently lined, his mouth tight. Aaron doesn't know what he looks like anymore. They switch off driving after a few hours, and Aaron lays on his side, contemplating Alex’s profile.

“Should let me trim your hair.” He comments when Alex brushes a long stray curl behind his ear.

“It'll be a cold day in hell before I let you near my head with a pair of scissors.” Alex retorts, and tosses him a wry grin. “You'd have me looking like the bride of frankenstein.”

Aaron hums, and watches Alex until his eyes grow heavy.

*

What seems jarring is this: Aaron finds a CD of guilty pleasure pop hits. He plays it until he’s sick of it, until Alex starts muttering the lyrics in their short forays beyond the car, songs constantly stuck in his head. Sometimes, sunk low in the passenger seat, listening to Alex murmur earworms, tapping his foot on the dashboard, everything seems normal--

(like that time in Chicago on business in some rental car with carpets faded from being over sanitized, listening to some strange Italian radio station so random snatches of song play in his head all week, so Alex would laugh but they wouldn’t change the channel)

Sometimes he can close his eyes and pretend they are in Chicago, and then Alex will swerve, clip something with the side of the car, tossing him roughly to the side, and Aaron will open his eyes just in time to see a body rolling off the window, eyes big, dead and unaffected, rolling in the skull until the image drops away, with only a smear of gore on the glass as proof that it happened.

“Fuck, sorry, you okay?” Alex glances down at him.

“Yeah. Was just surprised, I guess.” He was dozing with his eyes open, watching the blue sky through the square of the driver side window, watching Alex’s profile, pretending everything was like before. The reality check hurt more than the small graze he suffered from the door. He resolves to stop fantasizing.

This is reality now.

*

There’s a lone hand print in the frost swirling on the windshield of a wandering corpse that paid them no mind. His breath fogs out in front of him. Alex is already awake in the back seat, eyes half open, some inane harlequin romance closed over his thumb. He meets Aaron’s gaze evenly, like he was watching the whole time.

Routine greetings lay heavy on his tongue. He says nothing. Alex tips his head to watch him. His beard has grown in, full around his bow mouth. His eyes are big and sharp. Aaron thinks of waiting for him to say something. Except, what would Alex say?  Instead he leans forward, breathes out quiet relief when Alex meets him halfway and ghosts their lips together.

The kiss is slow and thoughtful. It is lonely and old, something soft between them fluttering like a songbird. They could press harder, could bite, could get mean. But like a thousand other things what would that prove? What does this prove? Instead they explore gently. Aaron’s fingers trail Alex’s cheek, rough with stubble, movements tender.

“Took you long enough.” Alex says against his mouth. His voice sounds like he's laughing, but neither of them smile anymore.

*

“I'm just saying, Song of myself was such an influential work, you can't say--”

“I'm not denying its influence. I just don't think its his greatest work.”

“Then what would be?”

“Well. Not song of myself. Its an ode to narcissism--”

“That's exactly what makes it so influential!”

*

Alex lost weight, his skinny wrists and thin hands struggling to keep a corpse from biting, neck straining away from yellowed bared teeth in a hollowed skull snapping at his face. Aaron wants to shout, but he hasn't the breath from running across the deserted parking lot. He wishes he hadn't left his gun in the car. He wishes he hadn't noticed just how frail Alex seems.

Between the two of them, Aaron is the muscle. Aaron can turn anything into a weapon, can swing a bat, or a tire iron, or a wooden plank studded with nails, and feel his muscles burn under the splinter crack of crushed bones.

He has nothing now except steel toed boots. He kicks the corpse off Alex so it flips off, opens its gaping maw and snarls at him. He snarls back, stomps on its skull hard, stomps again, and again until the bone gives and the corpse stills beneath his heavy heels.

(He used to think he was delicate, the kind of man privileged by a lack of struggle. Now he feels base and hard and natural.)

Alex lets his head flop back against the pavement and pants, eyes closed and relieved smile pulling his mouth. “Thanks,” he offers after a long moment. Aaron can't help watching him.

“Don't mention it,” he answers and holds his hands out for Alex to grab to pull him up.

*

The days melt again into scenes of what passes for domesticity now. They kill corpses, they collect more blankets for coming winter. They worry about what they'll do when the car breaks down for good, or they truly run out of gas. They kiss sometimes. More frequently, they lay together in the dark listening to the bump scrape growl of corpses on the other side of the interstate’s barriers.

They stop in front of another Walmart. Middle america seems to be made up solely of strip malls and billboards on empty highways warning them to repent. Aaron thinks they're in Vermont, but he lost track somewhere on the interstate, driving around wandering corpses and craters in the asphalt.

The Walmart smells of fruits left to rot and dead rats. Aaron stalks among the shelves, bat at the ready. Alex, rude and reckless, pushes around a shopping cart, into which he sweeps boxes of frootloops. Aaron rolls his eyes and moves on ahead, losing track of the rattle roll clank of Alex’s shopping cart in his search for batteries, new heavy work boots, winter jackets.

Alex’s yell echoes through the Walmart aisles, something clatters, something else snarls. Aaron abandons his hunt, rounding the corner sharply only to be clocked in the face.

He has enough presence of mind to wonder at the furious expression twisting red stained lips before he blacks out.

Aaron wakes in the back seat of the car, slumped next to Alex, temple throbbing. “You alright?” Alex asks, concerned and amused both. “I can't believe you got taken out by a teenaged girl half your size.”

Their new companions introduce themselves as Laf and Maria. He drives, gesturing with his hands as he speaks.  “Alex here talked us out of killing you and taking your stuff.” Laf says with a good natured chuckle, as though Alex had talked them out of another round of drinks at the pub or an ill advised purchase. It is both unnerving and rational.

“Let me guess, he gave you the Daniel Defoe Journal of a Plague Year talk.” Aaron rubs at his temple, his cool fingers a balm to the tender skin. Alex drums his fingers against Aaron’s thigh, grinning and entirely too pleased with himself.

“It was poetic, inspiring and extremely convincing.” Laf agrees, dodging a small crowd of corpses with ease. He glances at Aaron in the rearview mirror and nudges Maria with his elbow. “Apologize for hitting Mr Burr.”

“Sorry.” She intones, and doesn’t glance up.

Maria is a picture of teenaged rebellion. She reapplies red lipstick, adjusts her gold hoops, wears her long curly brown hair in two long braids down her back. She is quiet and sullen, until Alex responds to her grumblings in spanish, and then they chatter like lost cousins. Alex comes alive in their company, arguing with Laf animatedly like they’re back in court. Aaron didn’t know how much he missed people until Maria is there to groan at Alex to shut up, murmuring songs to herself as she gazes out the window.

Laf is a mystery. He smiles over it all like a patriarch, drives like a maniac, sings aloud sometimes like this is all some grand, twisted road trip. He has the melancholy look of someone who has lost everything but keeps existing because he has nothing better to do. Aaron knows it well. The days turn now into some new pattern that remains inexplicably the same. Alex and Aaron still find each other’s hands in the dark, with two new sleepy voices joining the other night sounds.

*

“So are you guys like, together?” Maria drawls. She’s clipping her nails, waiting for Laf and Alex to come back from scoping out a new van with more space. Aaron doesn’t bother asking her to help fold up the blankets. She keeps a machete tucked under her arm.

“Who?”

She rolls her eyes at him, the long suffering exasperation of a girl used to back talking adults who seem stupider than her. “You and Alex. who do you think?”

Aaron stands fully, his back realigns with a series of pops. He waits a moment before he answers, stuffing the rolled blankets in a dufflebag. “Not really.” he says, reconsiders and amends, “I mean I’m not really sure?”

Maria’s wearing neon green lipstick, it matches her windbreaker. She sneers, “You kinda seem like you’re together.”

Aaron thinks of explaining the nature of solitude and solace, the way sometimes another heartbeat is enough to ground you to something that would otherwise spin wildly out of your control. He thinks of explaining that he’s dug his nails in deep to keep this, whatever it is, between his palms and underneath him, something bright and warm and sure in the face of ever expanding uncertainty, like the ever expanding universe. He thinks she understands all that already anyway.

(He never realized how lonely he was until he reached for Alex’s hand in the dark, felt him reach back and breathed out with relief.)

“I guess we do.”

Maria whips around, dropping her nail clip and bringing out her machete at Laf’s whistle, Aaron hooks the bags over his shoulders and brandishes his pipe, looking around for Laf’s tall frame and Alex following behind. Alex is half draped over Laf’s broad shoulder, limping along, followed doggedly by  a band of corpses that stumble and bump into the cars, slowing their advance. Aaron tosses the bags back into the car, slides smoothly into the driver's seat with Maria close behind. She slices the head off a corpse and flops into the passenger seat. He’s already driving before Laf has the door closed, grimey rotting hands dragging at the side of the car.

“What happened?” He demands, swerving in between  corpses, driving on the shoulder of the road.

“A corpse caught under a truck grabbed Alex’s leg, and he fell.” Laf lifts said leg up onto his knee. Maria digs through her bag for a first aid kit, machete tucked between her legs.

“Guys relax. It didn’t bite me. I just rolled my ankle a bit, I’m fine.” Alex flaps his hand, but he doesn’t stop Laf from inspecting his leg. “See? Perfectly fine.”

Aaron’s heart doesn’t stop thundering until they’ve been driving for fifteen minutes, corpses becoming fewer and farther between. He unclenches his hands from the wheel, eases his foot off the gas, sucks in a deep breath. He thinks, _Welcome to the plague year_.

*

“Where are we going?” Aaron asks at large eventually, days later, holding a lighter beneath a can of beans and watching it bubble. Maria sleeps in the front seat, Great Expectations open on her lap, lipstick staining the seat headrest and mascara ringing her eyes. Laf is asleep against the window, blanket over his head to block out the sunlight Alex glances at him in the rearview mirror, eyes crinkled like he wants to smile.

“Does it matter?”

“I hope so.”

“Then let's go north. To Canada or something.”


End file.
